Aboard the bridge of the Enterprise E, Captain Worf watched as his ship traversed a place no Starfleet vessel had been before: the time vortex. It had remained locked away, with no-one having the technology to enter it, since the dawn of time itself. So it came as a large surprise when Lieutenant Harry Kim said "Sir, I'm picking up a vessel on sensors. Approximately 500 metres away, on a collision course. I can't get a fix on its size. The readings are fluctuating massively." "What? I thought no-one in the galaxy had the technology to travel in the time vortex." Commander Tom Paris was clearly confused by the events. "Can you read anything to identify it?" "There appears to be some writing on the hull." Lieutenant Kim responded. "There, I've got it." "Put in on the viewscreen." Worf had decided he needed to take control of the situation immediately. On the side of the hull, he could clearly see the words 'Police Box'.

In the control room of the TARDIS, the Doctor was fiddling with buttons and levers on the central console, as he usually does, when he saw something on the monitor of the TARDIS that shocked him more than almost anything had in a thousand years. On the screen he could see, in the time vortex, the starship Enterprise. And it was heading straight towards the TARDIS. All the doctor could say was "What?!" He immediately decided that a collision was probably inevitable, so decided the best thing to do was just sit back and see what happened. And shout 'Geronimo'.

As Worf realised the Enterprise was going to hit this tiny and yet immensely huge ship, he thought This should just break apart on the outer hull. But it won't. For some reason, Worf knew that this ship was not a police box, and it was not made of plain wood. His first officer, Commander Tom Paris, was reminded of an old legend he had heard. Apparently, there was once a time traveller, the last of his kind from a galaxy far away, who often visited Earth on his travels. His name, according to legend, was the Doctor, and he appeared in a blue, 1960's police box. And now, on the starship Enterprise, he was about to crash into a blue, 1960's police box. Tom Paris thought finding a blue 1960's police box in the middle of the time vortex should have been ridiculous. And yet he didn't find it ridiculous at all.

The Doctor saw the Enterprise E hurtling towards his TARDIS, and thought This is ridiculous. The starship Enterprise in the time vortex. Completely ridiculous. It was then that the Doctor realised he didn't know which one was hurtling towards him. He had heard about the Enterprise NX-01, because that had been humanity's first starship that was truly capable of interstellar travel. He had also once met the USS Enterprise NCC-1701, the ship of the great Captain Kirk. And he had encountered the Enterprise D before and he had seen the Enterprise J in combat at the Battle of Procyon V. He maintained that he had been a neutral party in that conflict, despite evidence that he had "accidentally" blown up one of the Sphere Builders' ships. But he had never seen any other space-faring Enterprises, leaving an A, B, C, E, F, G, H and I that he knew nothing about. So he supposed that he should probably make an attempt to find out which one of the starship Enterprises he was about to crash into. He pressed a variety of buttons on the monitor and the registry number on the hull of the ship appeared on the screen. U.S.S. Enterprise N.C.C.-1701-E. E, which one was that? The Doctor thought to himself. He presumed it had come after the Enterprise D, so he decided it was reasonable to assume some of the crew he had met on the Enterprise D would be on the Enterprise E. He would contact them, he decided, after he had finished crashing into them.